


Murmurs From The Dying Sun

by mansikka



Series: Shade Falls On Us [4]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Caring Magnus Bane, M/M, Memories, POV Magnus Bane, Sick Alec Lightwood, Worried Magnus Bane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-26 12:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mansikka/pseuds/mansikka
Summary: Magnus starts watching for signs of Alec being sick, and they finally begin to talk about what's happening to him.





	Murmurs From The Dying Sun

A full day has passed since Alec was returned to him. And whilst Magnus has been more than happy to indulge in nothing but his company to make up for all the time they’ve been parted, there’s a ticking time bomb at the back of his mind reminding him there are things they need to discuss. If Alec didn’t seem equally reluctant to broach the subject of such things, it would be easier to break the bubble they’re in.  

It’s not like it’s not obvious Alec isn’t back to full health, Magnus thinks, as Alec begins to stir against his chest again after yet another impromptu snooze. And it’s not like he’s been indulging in him too much and wearing him out—not too much, anyway, and not in any way where Alec’s had to put in too much effort.

Still, Magnus thinks, shifting a little with the growing pressure of guilt, perhaps he should have waited until Alec was… stronger; fully recovered is not a thing he can pretend they'll get to have. It’s hard to remember that, especially with the way Alec is pressing lingering kisses over his chest as he wakes himself up.

“What time is it?” he asks croakily, and Magnus has to close his eyes at the way his scruff brushes against his skin. When he’d first laid him out in this bed weeks ago, he’d been clean-shaven, as Alec usually was. And for the first few days, Magnus had kept him that way, magicked away the first signs of stubble hoping, pointlessly, that Alec would return quick enough to be able to deal with that himself.  

But when he hadn’t after a week, Magnus had left nature to do its thing, not surprised by the quickness of the appearance of his scruff since he’s spent so much time with his lips pressed against Alec’s neck, yet fascinated by the spread of it over his jaw and throat.

Alec stirs his chin over his sternum as though he’s aware of Magnus’ thoughts, and raises himself up for a kiss.

“Time for lunch, perhaps,” Magnus tells him with a sweep of his hands down his sides, “you hungry?”   

“I think so,” Alec replies, shifting up to sit and looking down at his stomach like that might tell him.

“You don’t know?”

“No,” Alec replies, staring down at himself for another second, then raising his head to meet his gaze with a frown, “not really. I don’t… I don’t think I’ve really felt all that hungry since I got here. _Back._ I know I’m thirsty—at least, I was. But now… I mean, I think I _can_ eat, but—”

“How about some soup?” Magnus suggests, doing his best to disguise his concern behind a smile, and cursing himself for taking the easy option. He’s not missed the way Alec is twitching, the way his eyes dart about the room at times, and how he keeps on spacing out. Echoing the beginnings of a need he’d neglected to see in Isabelle, yet knew only too well from Jem. Yin Fen is an entirely different thing to demon venom, of course, Magnus chides himself, yet can’t stop himself from looking, searching Alec for signs of the troubles that might be ahead.

“Okay,” Alec replies, breaking him from his thoughts, and Magnus knows he’s got to talk to him. That Alec is yet to even mention the Institute surely is a red flag of a warning. He’s been too selfish to push it though, Magnus sighs to himself, disguising it again this time with a kiss, before sliding out of the bed.

He busies himself preparing soup for Alec, though it’s little more than conjuring some from a favorite restaurant, arriving steam fresh in the bowls that he’ll wash and return once they’re done with them, Magnus adds as a mental note to himself, sliding down into a seat beside Alec and nodding for him to eat.

Magnus’ stomach churns with every disinterested swirl of Alec’s spoon, unclenching only when he takes a first reluctant sip that turns into something closer to enthusiasm as he begins to eat.

“I bet I’ve missed about a hundred messages,” Alec says absently, and Magnus tenses, bracing for the beginning of the conversation he’s been putting off, yet there was never any chance of avoiding.  

“I imagine so,” Magnus cautiously agrees, thinking of the phone he’d quietly plugged in to charge yesterday the second time Alec had fallen back to sleep.

“And you said,” Alec adds, scraping up the last of his soup, apparently being famished all of a sudden, “everyone else was okay?”

“They were,” Magnus agrees, struggling to get anything down past the lump in his throat.

“I think I… I think I remember them visiting,” Alec says then, screwing up his nose as though trying to picture the moment. Magnus resists pushing the bowl away having lost all enthusiasm for even trying to eat.

“Oh?” he says, because he’s not sure how to get any other, more complicated words out.

“Yeah,” Alec nods, turning a little to him and squeezing a hand around his arm, “felt you too,”

“You did?”

“Yeah,”  

But there’s hesitation in Alec’s voice the second time he speaks, and it makes Magnus’ stomach jolt, fearing whatever it is he’s about to tell him, though from the look on his face, guessing before it’s even said out loud.

“Alec; it’s okay if you didn’t remember me,” he says quietly, trying not to be irrational, trying to pretend his own words are true.

“I… at first I didn’t know too much of anything,” Alec sighs, sitting back tiredly. Magnus makes quick work of sending their bowls to the sink and holds Alec up as they make their way to the couch.

“What do you remember?”

Alec sinks back against the cushions and tangles his fingers through Magnus’ to play with, frowning at the effort of having to think. “I remember… fighting. This… never ending wall of demons spewing out of a rift on to the streets, and us all getting split up as we tried to fight them back,”

Magnus makes a noncommittal sound at that, residual anger still brewing in his gut for exactly how Alec managed to get separated so far from the others meaning he was the one that got attacked. Not that he’d prefer the attack to fall on anyone else, of course, or wishes another person was there to share Alec’s burden. He just wishes none of this had ever happened, and that there was some way for him to take the last few weeks back for Alec.

“Okay,” is all he says though, because how else is he going to follow up that?

“I remember… a _lot_ of demons,” Alec rephrases, frowning to himself, pulling Magnus’ hand further into his lap, “a whole lot of them,”

“Apparently, the Odzer demons operate most efficiently in swarms,” Magnus confirms, feeling sick at the image that conjures of them descending on Alec.

“So, you know them,”

“Only a little,” Magnus replies, wishing he had no reason to know about them in any way but in passing.

“And then I remember… waking up here,” Alec says then; Magnus can’t tell if he’s skipping over the details because he doesn’t like that he doesn’t remember, or that Alec can tell that he is upset.

“Oh,”

“I remember you looking really, really worried,” Alec sighs, turning and dropping his forehead down against Magnus’. “I didn’t know why, or what to do. And then I kind of remember everything fading back,”

Magnus closes his eyes, imagining all kinds of things for the place Alec has been, but not thinking he can conjure a single one of them in his mind that would be close enough to where he’s been. “What… what was it like?”

“I think a better question is, _what_ was it?” Alec immediately retorts with, sitting back and raising an eyebrow as though he can feel the concern coursing through him. Magnus swallows, attempts to dart his eyes away for a second, but ends up just bringing them straight back.

“Alec,” he begins, smiling with difficulty, “I… I can only tell you what I know, which isn’t much; Odzer demons are… thankfully, very rare. Very rare, despite their tendency for working in swarms; there are very few documented cases about their attacks. Which means I had… little to go on,”

“So? Tell me what you do know,” Alec prompts, pressing a kiss against his temple that says he doesn’t blame him for whatever he’s about to tell him. Which is stupid, Magnus chides himself, since there is not a part of this that is his fault.

“The Odzer demons are… serpent-like creatures—”

“Serpents?” Alec immediately interrupts, shaking his head. “But they had—”

“Limbs,” Magnus finishes for him with a pinched smile, “yes; they are not true… snakes as such. Just have… numerous serpent-like qualities. The forked tongue. Shedding skin. Fangs. The… the venom,”

“I got bit,” Alec says, his eyes blowing wide in realization, and Magnus can’t help but wince at the resurgence of that particular image. Of Alec being laid out prone and punctured on this very couch.

“Yes, Alexander. Multiple times, it would appear,” he says, and then all Magnus can picture is Alec’s skin mottled with puncture points. So many that it had taken his magic an age to free Alec of every blemish of them.

“I don’t remember that at all,” Alec says, and Magnus fights and fails slumping in relief.

“No?” he asks anyway, because he has to check.

“Not a thing,” Alec confirms with a shrug. “I remember thinking there were too many of ‘em, and then, like I said. I woke up here,”

“That’s… something,” Magnus sighs, grimacing to himself.

“So, what happened?” Alec softly prompts, squeezing his hand, ducking his head just enough to force Magnus to smile back at him.

“You… their venom, it… it has unknown… qualities,” Magnus settles for saying, really not sure how he’s supposed to get his words out. “Much like a… like a regular venomous snake, an Odzer demon will sink its fangs into its victim—its prey, and inject it with venom that… incapacitates it, prevents it from moving,”

“So like… paralyzing?” Alec suggests, to which Magnus gives a half smile.

“Yes. Only, it isn’t… you weren’t prey in the traditional sense,”

“Meaning, they weren’t planning on getting themselves a snack,” Alec smiles, attempting to lighten the mood, which should make things easier. But it doesn’t, Magnus thinks, squeezing his eyes closed for a second, it really doesn’t.  

“No,” he agrees anyway, and because it hurts thinking about the words he has to get out next, leans forward for a kiss to distract himself, just for a few minutes.

Alec doesn’t seem to mind.

“So?” Alec says when they pull back from each other. “If not to eat, then what?”

“Like many demons,” Magnus says, fumbling for the best route with which to take his words, “they thrive on memories. Negative emotions. Fear, mostly, and confusion,”

“Okay,”

“They didn’t… obviously they didn’t steal your memories altogether, but they must have done enough to make you doubt,”

“They did,” Alec confirms, guardedly, and Magnus has to hold his breath for a second for imagining being lost to him altogether.

“And—”

“It was weird,” Alec says then, frowning. “At first, I was just kind of stuck there. Suspended, in I don’t know what, but just… _being_. And I… for however long that was, I didn’t know anything. What, or who I was, where I was; anything at all,”

“That must have been… confusing,” Magnus tries, not able to imagine what Alec is describing at all.

“It was,” Alec says with a pinched grimace, “and I kept getting, like… jolts of memory. Mainly Jace and Izzy—”

The look on his face is nothing but apology. Magnus wants to tell him it’s not his fault, that he had no control over what he was remembering or not.

“—but mostly it was… was like I was… it was like it was dividing the… I don’t know, the… the different parts of my life. Like… I could remember the Institute, the Clave, all of that—sort of,” Alec says with a huff, shaking his head, “and then this vague sense of… _other_ ,”

“Me?” Magnus fills in for him, telling himself he has no right to be hurting like he is for Alec’s words.

“You,” Alec smiles, cupping his face and kissing him thoroughly, leaning their foreheads together and sighing softly there for a few seconds before slowly drawing back. “I… I didn’t really know it was you, as such, but I… I was drawn here, to you. It was like… it was like I had a pull to come back to you, _knowing_ to come back to you; even if I… even if I didn’t specifically know it _was_ you,”

“I see,” Magnus smiles, trying to take comfort from that at least. This is not Alec’s fault, nor anyone’s; there is more at stake than his own wounded feelings of not being remembered.

“I’m not really describing this very well,” Alec says then, and suddenly it doesn’t matter. Magnus doesn’t need to know the full details. He just needs to prepare Alec for what might be happening next.

“So. The Odzer… the venom, it… it keeps a victim—prey in place, so that it can… harvest that emotion of confusion. Sometimes it takes aspects of memories, sometimes its control is so overwhelming that… that people succumb to it in that in between state,”

“People get… people get lost there?” Alec asks, eyes wide with alarm.

“People die there. Mundanes,” Magnus amends with a grimace, “drained away of all sense of themselves; lives, memories, feelings. Everything that they once were,”

“So… you’re telling me I’m… I’m the first Shadowhunter to get bitten by these things?” Alec asks then, catching up immediately to the things Magnus hasn’t yet told him.

“The first I know of,” Magnus amends with a sigh, “there may be many undocumented cases. That doesn’t help with… knowing how to help you,”

“I guess not,” Alec agrees, and already he’s looking tired, ready to sink back into slumber yet again.

He can’t let him, Magnus thinks, aching with the urge to just let him sleep, pretending that might be the thing to help here—to let him sleep it off. But envious of the time sleep steals Alec away from him.

“So then what happens?”  

“Well,” Magnus starts to say, ironically then stalling for time, “it’s… complicated. Since you… since you survived that particular… that ordeal, and are awake again, there are… we can… we’ll have to make educated guesses about what comes next,”

“Magnus,” Alec says, nudging against him, “you don’t need to… you don’t need to try and make this easier for me. Just… tell me what I need to do to get over this,”

Magnus doesn’t mean to allow tears to begin welling up in his eyes, and he really doesn’t mean to allow them to start falling again. It’s only been a few hours since he was last crying, and he’s raw from it—but more than that; Alec doesn’t need it from him. Alec needs his strength.

“You won’t,” he blurts out, closing his eyes and turning his face away a fraction so he can wipe those infuriating tears away.

“I won’t?” Alec repeats, shaking his head like he doesn’t understand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I can’t… I can’t know, anything for certain,”

“So tell me what you think you know,” Alec counters, narrowing his eyes at the caution in his voice.

“I… I don’t know, Alexander,” Magnus pleads, and he’s not really meaning to stall any further. It’s just there’s no easy way to get this out, to help Alec accept what may or may not be about to happen to him.

“Magnus—”

“Alexander,” he says, turning to face him for fully, then clasping his hands gently between his own, “this is… not going to be easy for you. To hear, or experience,”

“Not gonna be any easier for you holding back on telling me,” Alec points out, and Magnus can’t help himself. He slumps forward into the crook of his neck and sighs there, shaking his head back and forth, summoning strength he wishes he didn't have to summon before pulling back enough to look Alec in the eye.  

“Alec,” he says, gentle as he can make it, sucking in a breath and telling himself not to stall any longer, “you’re going to… that… losing of themselves that the Mundanes experience in the… wherever you are suspended, it… sometimes… often, it carries over into the waking world,”

“So I could… I could still be drained of… of all that… that makes me _me_?” Alec asks, his tone shifting to that of prepared soldier, and breaking Magnus’ heart for the set determination in it.

“It’s… it’s one possibility, yes. Though I would imagine that… that for a Shadowhunter, that it is… that there is something in your blood that would… that would make that the least likely outcome,”

“How so?”

“Well,” Magnus says, swallowing with difficulty, “compared with how long the Mundanes I’ve read about were trapped in that… dimension, I’d imagine that your… that the angel blood that is part of your—your essence, is something that… is something that prevents that from happening. Entirely anyway; like I said, I can’t know for sure. It could just happen over a much, much longer period now that you’re… now that you’re back,”

Alec nods at his words, seeming to consider them carefully, and then a look of delayed surprise hits his face. “So how long… if I wasn’t gone _long_ , how long was I… how long was I gone?”

“Only nine weeks,” Magnus says, becoming perfectly still to brace for his reaction.

“Nine weeks?” Alec repeats, incredulous at the idea. “That’s not exactly short, Magnus, that's—”

“Two of the cases that I read about suggested that Mundanes were suspended there for actual years. Seven, in the case of one unfortunate soul,”

“ _Seven_?” Alec says, his voice getting even higher in alarm, and leaving Magnus wishing he could do something to take that look from his face.

“Yes,”  

“That’s… that’s too long,” Alec says, and Magnus can’t help but agree with him. He thinks of the torture that was Alec being absent nine weeks, and thinks how even that felt unbearable.

“Yes. It is,”

To his surprise, Alec is then scooping Magnus up in his arms and breathing hard into his neck, pressing repeated kisses there. “Thank you, Magnus,”

“For what?”  

“You had to—I mean, you didn’t _have_ to, but… you… you looked after me. Stayed with me. All that time. Nine weeks is… is still ages—”

“I _did_ have to,” Magnus counters firmly, shaking his head against him, “I would not be anywhere else but with you to go through that. Even if I couldn’t reach you; there was no way I was going to leave you. Ever,”

Alec gathers him closer still, and the fate that may be about to fall on him is delayed a few minutes longer as they breathe each other in.

“So,” Alec says eventually, following it up with a kiss to the back of Magnus' ear as he pulls back, “if that’s unlikely—we think it’s unlikely that that’ll happen to me. What else could happen?”

“This is the part we know least about,” Magnus tells him, trying to inject urgency into the look he’s giving him instead of the fear that he knows is there in his voice.

“Magnus,” Alec says, smiling at him, “unless you’re saying you won’t be with me for that as well—”

“I’ll always be with you,” Magnus interrupts immediately, his eyes already brimming over with tears, “I’ll always be with you. As long as you’ll have me. As long as I get. As long as you want me around,”

“Magnus,” Alec laughs then, nuzzling against his cheek before pressing a kiss there, and holding his hands again in a way Magnus thinks is supposed to be reassuring, “I’ll always want you. I love you; there’s not—there’s no way back from that. For me anyway,”

“Me neither,” Magnus says softly, not wanting to speak too loud for revealing how much his voice is threatening to crack, “Alexander, I cannot see my world without you in it. I can’t even imagine—”  

“Hey,” Alec says, stopping him with a kiss, “I’m not planning on going anywhere until… until I have to. Until my… time’s up, or whatever,”

Snatches of conversations come back to Magnus then; difficult words they’ve spoken together about immortality. How Alec might not be able to give him a forever, but that he can share with him all the time he’s got left to give. They’ve figured, he’s only young, and he’s strong, and healthy; he’s got years in him before they even have to worry about anything like that.

Only, Magnus can’t imagine even decades from now bearing to give Alec up. It’s selfish, he knows, and maudlin to think about, but for Alec what seems like an endless stretch of time seems like the blink of an eye for Magnus. And he knows that once Alec leaves him, once he goes where no immortal can ever follow, he will never find it in himself to love again. How could he, when the only thing he has truly loved is currently staring back at him, waiting with forced patience for him to reveal his fate.

“Oh, Alexander,” he chokes out, tears splashing down his cheeks as his breath comes out in a shudder, unable to do anything more than fall back into the crook of his neck.

* * *

 

 


End file.
